The search engine wars

As the Internet gets more crowded and develops finally into the undisputed centre of world business, success with search engines becomes more and more critical. It takes a very wide range of experience, knowledge and skills to succeed ethically here; but to succeed with rapid results, shortcuts and devious techniques needs a slightly narrower focus, mainly in coding, and of course with a mindset and willingness to take that path. There are plenty of volunteers willing to go that route.

The search results - and therefore the search engines- are increasingly under attack, in terms of the volume of SE spam, the number of unethically-achieved positions, and the increasing level of skill of those attacking them. The SE wars are hotting up to the extent that they now affect every single website on the Net in some way; and no website can be managed properly without consideration of the issues.

For example, dynamic site codebases that were completely acceptable in the past can no longer be used successfully; and numerous website management techniques that seem completely innocuous, and which used to be perfectly acceptable, can no longer be used. In order to compete successfully (at least ethically, at any rate), it has to be recognised that the Net is in a constant state of flux and what used to work often no longer does. The challenge is to find new ways to compete that are ethical and effective and it takes a lot of skill to compete with the top bad guys.